Video Transcript:

Hello there, today I want to talk to you about self-love, and I think one of the hardest things that we have to deal with as human beings is the ability to truly love ourselves.

I think it’s really easy for us to love other things, so for example, I think, you know, if you’re a dog person, I think it’s really easy to love dogs; and if it’s a cat person, it’s really easy to love cats; and if you’re in love with someone, or you love someone, it’s really easy to love that person; and, you know, maybe, you know, when you watch nature programs, you see whales on the television, it’s really easy to love those things around us, and I kind of come back to that.

I think the hardest thing is to be able to really love ourselves. Like, when you look in the mirror, you know, imagine you were getting naked looking in the mirror and you were looking at your naked body, and I could imagine that the first thing you would tell me is what’s wrong with your body, maybe you’re too, fat you’re too thin, too old, too young, your cock’s too big, too small, this isn’t right, that isn’t right, I’ve got lines here; and I think what happens is that when we critique ourselves that actually we remove ourselves more and more from the ability of loving ourselves.

And I also think that we maybe do that on an emotional level: I’m selfish, I’m insecure, I did that wrong; and I think we give ourselves a really, really hard, tough time, and it’s no surprise that once we’ve done all of that, that we kind of find that difficult to, to really love ourselves and I think that there’s something about, I don’t know, if you even, if you’re in love with somebody, you know somebody’s imperfections, yet you still love them anyway, and you kind of see through them or maybe you accept them but also at another level when you then apply that same rule to yourself it kind of doesn’t hold.

Like, if you think about, if you think about mistakes that you may have done in your life, with people, situations that you would have played differently, often you would still feel guilty about how you were with that person, but if somebody else was in your shoes and, say, you were advising a friend, you’d be saying, well you just need to really let yourself off the hook, you need to forgive yourself, you need to let go; and yet we find it very very hard to do that to ourselves, and that it’s all a bit like bleh; and we kind of, just, feel very removed from ourselves, and I think, what, we don’t love ourselves, we’re not happy, and I’m owned, and we’ve kind of, you’re out of sorts, and life doesn’t feel that good.

And I want to bring you today the possibility of the kind and compassionate voice that you could bring to yourself, like how could you, with all of your perceived imperfections, how could you still find in your hearts that place of self-love, that place of self-care, that place that could forgive yourself. Or maybe the step beyond that is realizing that there’s nothing to forgive, like one of the things I find in my life that I’m, I’m kind of with, is that when I look back over my past, and different decisions I made, and different, different situations that I was in, you know, I’m the age I am today, and I probably handle situations better today than, say, I did five or ten years ago. But the one thing I do know is that I, each time I had something going on in my life, I did the best decision at the time so in each moment of my life I made the best decision based on the resources, knowledge, decisions, possibilities, each time I made the best decision and I think in telling myself that, I can sort of like love that part of me a little bit more, I can kind of bring love to that.

And the other thing I think about is the way that I take care of myself, like I often hear people tell me that they take care of others before themselves, and, and I would argue, and if you look at, like, modern spiritual discussions that you need to be at the top of your tree in terms of priority, in terms of who is, who is top of your priority list; it has to be you because how can you love other people, truly love other people, if you can’t truly love yourself, if you can’t truly bring it back in and love you more. But there are some decisions I think I’ve made in my life where I have basically come to, I would do this if it was for another person, but actually I love me more, and I love me more to stop me putting myself in situations that are harmful to me or to stop me keep giving to situations and people that don’t serve me that, that deplete me; I kind of feel that you need to be at the top of your list.

And I think the other thing I would say here is about being really, really kind to yourself, like how is your schedule, is it packed full of different things; or do you allow yourself space, time to breathe, time to just be yourself; do you feed yourself nice food, things that are healthy for you, do you exercise your body; or are you kind to yourself, do you let yourself binge-watch stuff on Netflix, you know, whatever it is, it’s like where is that kindness to yourself, how do you, do you treat yourself kindly? So today I just wanted to invite you to consider a little bit about being able to be, to have self-love, and I think you know there’s a few things that, it’s about forgiving yourself, and it’s about finding that kind voice in yourself, and it’s also about putting yourself first, and it’s also about being kind to yourself, doing nice things for yourself, taking care of yourself.

So I want to leave that with you today, I want you to have a little play around with that, a little play around with the idea of loving yourself more, and just try it out for a while, see how you get on with that.

Leave me some comments below, and I’ll happily respond to them.

Good luck with that, and yeah, let me know how you get on.

Okay lots of love, blessings to you. Thank you.